


wide-eyed both in silence

by arestlesswind



Series: Abigail Lives, or the bitter writings of an angry fan [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Abigail Lives, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous Relationships, Character Death Fix, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 16:25:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/902391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arestlesswind/pseuds/arestlesswind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Walking into the courtroom, her heels thunder without the scope in the hollow walls - his own personal living corpse. He didn't know what to do, can still taste her blood on his tongue, in his gums, still feel it embedded under his nails. (What do you do when everyone else sees the ghost in your head?)"</p><p>After Hannibal's trial, Will and Abigail reunite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wide-eyed both in silence

 

* 

_"The girl in Hobbs’s apartment came to see me. She was okay and we talked a lot."_

(Thomas Harris, _Red Dragon_ )

 

 

 

*

The first letter arrives his third week free.

Italian postmark, no return address. A blank sheet of paper, folded in thirds, no ink or lead to be found.

Will lifts it open carefully and an ear falls out.

Not a real one. Outline cut from paper, and it drifts like a feather, descending slow onto the floor by his bare foot.

It's all he needs to know.

It still gives him nightmares.

 

 

*

Her face isn't right. People wear their age differently – in the turn of the mouth, under the eyes, the arch of their backs.

Abigail Hobbs wears her age like a shield. A weapon. A banner, out in front and trumpeting. The most she can be is twenty, twenty-one, two years since he choked on her ear, days and numbers scratched in his mind instead of the walls of his cell. (Once he knew age and birthday but it was easy, so easy, to immortalize her in youth, so young, golden and gleaming and beautiful and dead.)

Her eyes are still bright as winter's frost, cheeks soft and round. Babyish, freckles a tiny dusting. Probably she's one of those people blessed/cursed with a look of permanent adolescence, even though she's grown up too fast and learned the burden of skin too soon.

Her forehead's different. Nose. _Plastic surgery._ Not so much she loses herself, but enough to mask.

A change to survive.

 _I call Abigail Hobbs to the stand,_ and Will hopes the reporters' hands snap off scribbling and typing and recording. Second row, listening, spoken his part and parcel for now, he smirks crooked.

(Behind him, to the right, Freddie Lounds is also smirking. Two letters, then.)

Abigail isn't taller, but respectable two-inch heels guide the image. A tailored black pencil skirt matched to a white blouse with sweet ruffled sleeves, first two buttons undone. Both scars visible like a geography equation, one almost perfectly layered atop the other but not quite. One desperate, the other assured.

(The second time, she wielded the knife. Will had wondered.)

She wears her hair to her shoulders in a smooth bob, a shade or two darker than natural. Tucked behind one ear, pinned up where the other once was. She crosses one leg over the other and Will notices her thighs, hardened muscled things, strong – the cut of the blouse on her shoulders fits snug. She's gained the weight of adulthood. No longer a weeping willow, but a creeping vine.

She's calm, so calm, every meticulous part in place.

It chills him a little.

She swears on the Bible and answers questions with hands that only fidget slightly, eyes that dart to the jurors. To Will, the heaviness of years stretching taut between them on a string.

Abigail doesn't look at the man in the defense seat. Not until the prosecutor asks, “And can you point out the man who killed those women and aided in your escape? Is he in this courtroom today?”

Abigail slides her eyes, locks them, lifts one trembling finger.

“Him,” she says. She pauses long enough to swallow. “Dr. Hannibal Lecter.”

The crowd titters.

Bang, bang, _silence in the courtroom._

“He made me kill Nicholas Boyle. He wanted me to kill others. For him. To become his...to become like him.”

And with the flick of muscles, her face closes off. It reminds Will of the gathering clouds before a storm, ash and dark and wrought with terrifying possibility.

“He's the devil,” she says. “He came to me in good clothes.”

Pride burns through Will's breastbone like a bullet.

Everyone looks at Hannibal Lecter, then.

Except Will.

Will only has eyes for Abigail.

 

 

*

 _The Minnesota Shrike's Daughter: Returned from the Dead!_ screams the Tattler, complete with exclamation point.

“Nice headline,” Will says, index finger tapping against the keyboard. He's tested several in his head. _Good job. Congratulations. Glad you're not dead._ This seemed the easiest.

“It'll be the story of the decade,” Abigail says. She leans against the wall and slides one heel off her ankle. Red today, one and a half inch. “According to Freddie.”

On cue Will snorts derisive and Abigail hums out a laugh. It takes him a second to place the sound - he's never heard mirth, rarely witnessed smiles. "Come on. She helped us."

“The only thing I want help from is a warm bed,” he says tonelessly. He fumbles off his glasses and palms his eyes, exhaustion a fast crushing thing. He glances over, and she's watching him, shoes hanging from two fingers, irises cutting and keen and so blue, shocking from her skull.

Under such scrutiny his skin should crawl.

(He's fine.)

In his house, in the dim lights (he still has migraines), in the breathing silence, she looks like a little girl again. So small.

Beginnings are the toughest part.

“Still want that beer?” he asks.

She arches her eyebrows. “Just one?”

 

 

*

The second letter was timed with the announcement of Dr. Lecter's trial.

This time there was no postage, either. Just paper, and one sentence.

_You're not alone._

Walking into the courtroom, her heels thunder without the scope in the hollow walls - his own personal living corpse. He didn't know what to do, can still taste her blood on his tongue, in his gums, still feel it embedded under his nails.

(What _do_ you do when everyone else sees the ghost in your head?)

She moved toward him in the hallway outside the courtroom, framed by shouted questions and flashbulbs, and Will settled on a pathetic, raspy, "Hey."

They hadn't been close enough to embrace. For anything, really. He'd cradled her hands, sat crowded close on a plane and envisioned a thousand ways to end her life. He didn't blame her, wouldn't have wanted himself around if given the choice. She gravitated to Hannibal, calming and steady, not a shaking trigger finger.

Abigail buttoned the collar of her shirt to the neck. She beamed at him. She was _radiant._

She was alive.

“Hey,” she returned quietly. This wasn't an avenging angel, a condemnation for media or jurors or the man whose name draws silence in respectable company.

This sounded like Abigail.

She twined her arms around his slender waist and Will held her so cautious, so gentle, fragile spun glass.

 

 

*

They've moved to whiskey and Will flickers a smile. Thinking about the idealized young girl he found bleeding out on the linoleum floor and how she'd probably never tasted alcohol. (Did Hannibal provide her first taste?)

Abigail doesn't wait for the ice to settle in her glass before she tilts her head. The drink slides down her throat, Will watches it go.

“I like your place,” she says absently.

Will suggested they break in the back-porch swing. He loves the view, especially now, slow rain falling and the boat lights casting grainy halos on the mist.

“Not too different from the old,” he says.

Abigail blinks, eyebrows drawn together. “Did I ever see your house?”

“No." He takes a hearty swallow. "Not many people did.”

“Where did you live?”

“Wolf Trap, Virginia.”

“That's quite a move,” Abigail says dryly. And there's a moment of hesitation before she cocks a sharp shrug, folding one leg beneath her. “Florida's warmer, I guess," she adds, sounding like a sullen restless teenager and trusting him to hear.

Will drinks again to fill the silence. Winston whines, chin on Abigail's thigh. She's in jeans now, a comfy maroon sweater.

“You still have nightmares?” she asks, too casual.

Outside their words have nowhere to go but open space, can't ricochet and shatter and hide in cracked walls. It's left to the two of them to keep them safe and secret.

When Will laughs it's jagged, hoarse.

“Every night,” he admits: to himself, to her, to the unlistening sea.

The swing creaks as he angles his body toward her slightly, slow, not too close, trying not to spook her. She may wear steel in place of flesh, but Abigail is still a wary, flittering thing and Will will not repay her brittle trust with presumptions.

“You?” he asks.

Abigail lifts her head, eye contact fleeting, before glancing down into her glass. Half-full, half-empty, ice melting.

“Yeah,” she murmurs.

She drinks and crunches an ice cube between her teeth.

 

 

*

“Do you think you'll visit him?”

Will's nailbeds are white where they clench the fishing rod.

“No,” he says.

She nods.

 

 

*

They make a good catch. She doesn't help him prepare, memories too much. But she watches, eyes never leaving the fish as it's skinned, cooked, served on a plate and even then it's not until she chews her face soothes into something like peace.

 

 

*

“What time's your plane leave?”

“Eight am.” Abigail winds her scarf with practiced ease. “Early flights are quieter."

Will twitches his fingers at his waist. He feels aimless and adrift, casting the room like he hid the right phrase somewhere between scattered books and coffee mugs and rusty boat parts.

“You have a...” He clears his throat, palming the back of his neck. “Place to stay?”

Will swears her eyes are coy.

“I have a hotel,” she says, voice betraying her amusement. “Hannibal doesn't need his money anymore.”

The families of the victims receive compensation. The rest, under Abigail's guidance, will go to abuse shelters for women and children.

(It amazes him she can utter the name so easily, not flinch at a picked scab, as if it's powerless, just a word.)

When she goes to leave Abigail shifts to the balls of her toes and kisses his cheek. Chaste, almost, a gentle brush. Seeing. Trying. Will grips a hand on her throat, desperate for purchase, and traces her scars, back and forth under the pad of his thumb, and she balks back instinctive before she can hide. Allows a tiny sound between a gag and a gasp, Will remembers her heaving for air with split gaping voicebox, gagging on her own blood and no, no he can't immortalize her like that, beautiful delicate Ophelia in the reeds, she's _alive._ So alive. So autonomous. So pale. So warm. Not hiding her rolling eyes or approving gazes. Drinking with him in the awkward pauses and saying everything except the obvious.

Will holds his hand there, listening to her pulsebeat, fearing every empty space between.

He leans forward, face buried in her hair, smelling lilacs and a trace of a sweet perfume he can't name, he's more than half-drunk and he knows it but it's _Abigail_ and _human contact_ and something always unnameable and he's more than half-drunk. But Abi (thought the endearment, never called, wasn't his place) pulls away and lifts his hand free. She smiles slightly, not pity or indulgent but knowing, it breaks something inside him apart and warms his forgotten corners.

His fingers are shaking. She squeezes them.

Will wonders if the shaking ever stopped he could hold her.

 

 

*

The agonized pounding above his right eye turns out to be a rap on the door. He winces in the sunlight and Abi's unironically haloed, standing on his porch in the weeds. Her mouth twists into a grimace as she swiftly takes him in.

"C'mon," she sighs. She slides a lock of hair behind her good ear. "I make a mean hangover cure."

Scars, and a shield, and prowess in the kitchen: that's the trifecta Abigail Hobbs keeps from Hannibal Lecter. She flips omelets with surgical precision and smirks, posed with a hand on her hip and Will laughs, genuine, applauding as she sweeps into a bow. The coffee's good, too, rich and strong with two spoons of sugar at his request. Hers she takes black.

"I've thought about traveling," she says into the idle morning quiet.

He stirs his eggs. "Sick of Italy?"

"Sick of connotations." She swallows her coffee like she drinks her beer. "I was thinking Eagle Mountain. Highest point in Minnesota."

"Yeah, yeah, I - remember you telling me."

"Three hours to summit. Not that hard, really." Abi draws her lip between her teeth, chewing. "It's not my mom's birthday for another three months, but...if you wanted."

Will does want, and they do, bundled up in their fall clothes and joyfully breathless in the high sharp air. Abi cooks them dinner over a fire of meager sticks. They sleep under the stars, eyes open until not. Separate sleeping bags, but they huddle together just on the edge of comfortable.

After, they hold hands as they walk through the airport, disguised in hats and scarves, and fuck what anyone thinks.

 

 

*

For the few hours she breathed there, his house didn't feel as empty.

Her plane's in the air. Free, flying.

 

 

*

The first card arrives that Christmas.

Sincere but distant. Facts. Selling her villa (Hannibal's villa) in France to travel. A French girlfriend who makes her laugh and would Will by extension.

_I hope the nightmares get better, Will.  
_

Will rushes out, buys a gaudy card stamped with cotton candy holiday wishes and writes back enough to fill all the white space. Afterward, he has a finger of whiskey on the porch swing. Just him, and the dogs, and the ocean wind.

 

 

*

(One dog less – she loved Marion and Marion loved her, the black old lab with a lame leg no one would adopt.

Will's not the only one who collects unwanted things.)

 

 

*

She drives through one summer, hair long and blonde and skin freshly tanned. She grins and waves from the car, suitcase in hand. They hug hard on the porch, long but not too long. Her hair still smells of bleach and product, tickling his cheek and catching on the rim of his glasses. Will introduces her to Molly and Willy and doesn't say more. Molly knows everything, of course, but to talk is Abigail's choice.

(She chooses not. Her life is no longer defined by fathers and blood on floors.)

There's an ease to Abi's limbs, now, her walk and her smile. Poison drawn from a wound. Hannibal told Will to remember his scars, and Abigail does. They're her protection, cauterized and sallow: she jumps at sounds and things in the corner of her eyes; she distrusts nice men in nice suits.

So does he.

After they put Willy to bed the three of them sit on the porch swing. Will, Molly, Abigail. Will's reminded of things that could have been and never were. How he found a version of _family_ that fits snug along his bones, the right one, Molly smiling in her baseball caps and Willy bent over a reel.

They finish their beers and laugh. When Molly leaves for seconds, Abigail rests her hand on Will's wrist, tender skin. He kisses her palm softly, covering it warming with his own. She holds his thumb.

She rests her head on his shoulder and together they watch the boats steer to shore.

It's the last time Will sees her.

 

 

*

The cards come every Christmas.

A quiet, small, lovely little cabin. She sent pictures folded within the letter. Will smiled as he traced the images with a finger, knowing it was _home._ A second dog. Dozens of degrees in whatever she wants, but everything's planned. Her past makes no allowance for spontaneity.

He always writes back. A little less each time, because retired life is simple and boring. He thinks Abigail will appreciate simple and boring.

When he's done reading Will folds her letters slowly, carefully. Slides them back inside the envelope and places them in their rusted Victorian jewelry box (Molly picked it up from a yard sale), and closes the lid, his palm spread over the wood.

Secrets, kept safe.

He reread a lot, at first, extracting just as delicately. Committed them to memory until they soothed the shallow burning in his stomach, his own scar.

He doesn't need to reread them as much anymore. But he likes to.

 

 

*

She'll be okay.

He hopes for himself.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Your daily reminder that in Red Dragon, Abigail lives. And is essential to Will's healing, not his downfall. My OT3 is Will/Abigail/Happiness, however they find it. Technically takes place in the same universe as my Abi Survives fic, but I don't think you need the one to have context. I nicked the porch swing and the boat lights from Harris, and Abi drinking beers with the Grahams I heartfelt contribute to the genius of Miranda.


End file.
